The iPhone 16 Pro Max is everything that’s wrong with Apple

Sixteen days of use reveal six ways the company needs to hit the reset button in 2025

Only Apple diehards, who remember which year the company released which colors for the iPhone Pro Max, can tell which model’s back this is — a fact that’s not only telling but actually part of a bigger problem. (Image: Amanz, Unsplash)

It’s no secret that the iPhone is the very definition of the yearly, iterative, predictable, often boring hardware update in the smartphone world. Like clockwork, we get a new iPhone line every fall, we report on the differences between that and its predecessors, we usually do not find enough of those to justify an immediate upgrade and we just move on with our lives, waiting for another 12 months in order to find out if anything of note is different enough in the next iPhone line. It’s been like that for half a decade now.

That’s the main reason why yours truly was not supposed to publish yet another such piece about the iPhone 16 lineup. Not only is it pointless to keep on beating on a dead horse year after year (how many times does one really need to read that the newest iPhone is not a must-have for most people?), but he also did not intend on upgrading his iPhone 15 Pro Max to an iPhone 16 Pro Max and review it (he was planning on going straight for the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Ultra in 2025 instead).

But since the opportunity of getting the iPhone 16 Pro Max for very little presented itself recently — thus allowing every member of the family to upgrade to newer iPhones and migrate to iOS 18 — he ended up using Apple’s latest flagship as his daily driver after all. Subtitle aside, though, it took yours truly less than 16 days to realize something depressingly obvious but nonetheless interesting: the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the very embodiment of what is wrong with Apple’s current approach when it comes to its flagship models.

The iPhone has become the very definition of the yearly, iterative, predictable, often boring hardware update in the smartphone world.

There may be a point, then, in highlighting the 6 most important problems the everyday use of this smartphone draws attention to. Apple could even take this commentary — along similar ones already published by others — into account and decide to make a few changes in 2025… maybe?

The Camera Control button is…